AustLit

'Love is ‘many-splendoured’ and it enriches as well as tests us. It is both a universal, and at the same time, a unique experience; one we’ve all had at least once, if not many times, during our lives.

'The poems submitted for Poetry d’Amour 2020 reflect multi-faceted experiences, and explore love as affection, missed opportunities, a young and carefree seduction, the first stirrings of romance, compelling sexual arousal or physical attraction, the loving connections of family, the tender love of long familiarity, or the bereavement of a loved one.' (Publication summary)

'Set in a regional Australian newsroom in the 1890s, Oriel Gray’s The Torrents is a play about change. On the surface, it is about one man’s attempt to revitalise a declining gold mining town, but it also looks at the challenges of young journalist Jenny Milford as she tries to be taken seriously in the workforce. Both issues are unfortunately still relevant over 60 years after the play was first produced.' (Introduction)

'To find a collection of short stories so perfectly themed as The Circle and the Equator is a rare gift. These stories take us on a grand tour of the world, shifting in time, with each location bound to an historical event, often a violent one. They explore the lives of ordinary people confronted by extraordinary moments in history. The stories are in no discernible order with the first being set in 1978 Angola, the second in Berlin in 1921, the third in Hiroshima in 1952, and so on. However, what links them is an expression of often indifferent and random violence, sometimes because of conflict and war, and the aftermath this has on these people’s lives.' (Introduction)